Stagnant

Well it’s been a stagnant week. I have hardly played this week. I am signed up for the Blogger tourneys but haven’t been able to play either one the first 2 days. I am hoping that today I can play one of them. So far the fields look like they have been around 400-500 runners and with 72 getting a shot in the finals that’s not a bad payoff for a freeroll! I am used to 10,000 runners with top 100 getting a ticket to the next round. I did put in 4 hours last night. Felt like I was spinning my wheels again, but at least I finished up for the night. I played a little of everything..Badugi & NLH ring games, MTT tourneys and a bunch of 5.20 & 10.40 DON’s. I didn’t cash in any of my MTT tourney’s and managed to get sucked out on in several of them too. All in all a frustrating night in MTT tourneys. I lost several 80-20 favorites and worse! I lost a bit in Badugi and won a bit in my NLH ring game so most of my win came from DON’s. Basically I came ahead two $10.40 DON’s for the night. I broke even on my $5.20 DON’s meaning I lost the rake. I kept running two at a time and I would win one and lose the other…this happened four times in a row! I did four $10.40 DON’s and I won three of them. Not cashing in any of my MTT was kind of a bummer considering I played four of them and I didn’t run very deep in any of them. Breaking even on the $5.20 DON’s sucked too. It was just one of those nights when you lose all your races and then get sucked out on too a few times. I felt I was playing pretty good and just didn’t run very well. Oh well..at least I did finish up for the evening..C-ya
Dave
Starting BR: $235
Ending BR: $245

Up & Down

I need to learn to quit when I am ahead! LOL. There are too many times that I start off on a good night and keep playing an playing and end up finishing with a losing night. Everyone says to keep playing when you are winning, but I think I either get tired or since I am ahead lose some focus. Last night I signed up for a $10.40 DON and a $5.20 DON. I cashed in both and while they were winding down I signed up for a $2.20 Badugi tourney and a 60FPP satellite to the steps tourneys. I got up to 5,000 chips in badugi and then gave 1/2 of them back on the next hand! I hovered at around 2,500 chips and picked up a 9 high starting hand and pushed. I got sucked out on and was out in 37th with 16 getting paid. Still not too bad though. The FPP satellite paid the top 10 with tickets into the steps tourneys. I ended up getting a “Step 1” ticket. I went ahead and signed up for it right away and we were down to 4 and I got too aggressive with my A-K and was killed by a J-J. So I ended up playing almost 2 hours to win $1.50! Well at least it was FPP points. I was starting to get tired and should have gone to bed, but I knew I wouldn’t probably get to play anymore this weekend so I was going to make it a late night. Big mistake of course.. I signed up for another $10.40 DON and we were down to 6 and I was sitting on around 2,000 chips and there was a small stack around 1,000. I get As-8s and the big stack bully raises to 450 (blinds are at 75-150). I should have folded but he had been raising every hand for a full orbit now. I went ahead and called hoping for a bunch of spades. They threw out a K-10-6 flop with 2 spades. Bully puts out another 300 and I called. Turn gives me my nut flush with a 9 spades. Bully raises 450 and I push in and he quickly calls with his set of Kings. River brings a nice 10 to fill him up and put me out. I really do some dumb crap sometimes! Well this put me on tilt and I signed up for a $20.80 DON. I know..I really do know better and regretted it as soon as I hit the register button…I get A-K first hand and raise to 100 and get a caller..Flop is all low rainbow and he raises to 200 and I call. Turn is another low and he pushes and I fold. Lost 20% of stack on 1st hand..nice.. I lost another 100 when I called 100 more from the big blind with a pair of 6’s and the flop came all big cards and he bet out. Then I get A-K again in late position and an early position raises to 250. Blinds are up to 25-50 and this was a larger raise than I had seen anyone do up to this point. I thought he might be on a small to medium pair so I pushed all in hoping he wouldn’t risk most of his stack as a 20-80 if I had an over pair. Well he had J-J and called me after thinking about it some. No help for me and I was out in 9th. When will I learn to control my tilt better and not play up limits when I am losing!!! Well I was pretty pissed at myself for tilting another $20 away. I should have just signed off, but I didn’t want to just yet. I signed up for 2 tables of .25/.50 limit Badugi. I was up $7.50 pretty quickly, but I slowly bled it all back and stepped out when I was back to even. Then I opened up a table of .15/.25 NLH and bought in for $15 only. I haven’t played a ring game of NLH in quite some time and never at this buy-in. It was always at the .01/.02 level or .05/.10 a few times. I just sat at the first table I came across (I know..I know). After one orbit I could tell that not much was happening here and when I looked up my table I was like “WTF..why did I sit here??” I found a juicy table that was running almost 50% to the flop with avg pots of $5.00..now there’s my table!! I quickly sat there for another $15 and was going to jump off the earlier table when the blinds got to me. Before they came around though I picked up Ac-Jc and called a raise of $.75. 2 clubs came on the flop and I wasn’t going anywhere and called another $1.00 raise. Nut flush hit on the turn (doesn’t this sound familiar!! It cost me $10 at the Don earlier tonight). He raised to $2 and I reraised him to $4 and he called me. River was another club so at least I knew I had the nuts (no straight flush draws showing). He raised again and I reraised all in and he quickly called with the 2nd nuts King high flush. Well that was a nice double up I wasn’t expecting at this nitty table. I went ahead and said one more round after that one, but I didn’t connect much and lost another $2.00 before I left the table. The other table really had the chips flying… I was just waiting to get some cards so I could make some money. I finally got K-K and made a few bucks. By this time though a few of the wildcats had gone busto and the table calmed down.. It was getting late so I went ahead and signed off before I could talk myself into signing up for something else. After a huge yo-yo night I ended $7.00 down total. So did manage to recoup a big portion of my tilted $20.80 DON loss. Some day I might learn..but probably not.
Dave
Starting BR: $142
Ending BR: $135

Spinning Wheels

Well I managed to play some last night and ended up playing for 2 hours and finished about where I started. So other than a couple of FPP I just spun my wheels. I started off with a table of .25/.50 limit Badugi and set a personal record for losing a buy-in..LOL.. Wow was it ugly. I missed every single draw..and I do mean EVERY SINGLE draw. I had several A-2-3-X, A-3-4-X starting hands that I never improved on. The only Badugi I actually had was a dealt crappy Jack high and it wasn’t good enough to win by the end. So that put me down $10 in about 30 minutes so I opened up a $3.40 9 seat SNG for a change. Did o.k. and we were down to 6 and I had 2,200 chips and one of the shorter stacks pushed in early position. I re-raised w/ A-K “trying to isolate” him since he had pushed several hands in a row I figured I was ahead. Big Blind called w/ A-A and killed me deader than a dinosaur. P.S. I was ahead of the shorter stack as he had K-Q so at least my read was correct. I then opened up two $5.20 DON tables and also signed up for a $2.20 Pot limit Badugi tourney and the $2.20 NLH $1500 guaranteed 6-hand tourney that was about to start. Well 2nd hand of the Badugi I get a Jack high starting hand and Pot it. Some yahoo re-pots it back to me. I was worried I was already behind so I just called to see if he stood pat or drew on the first draw. If he drew I was going all in and if he stood pat I was folding to a raise. Well he drew 1 card so I pushed and he called. He also drew and 2nd and 3rd draw and finally showed a Jack high Badugi with a better kicker. Well crapola doesn’t that suck. The way I was running last night though I wasn’t surprised. Funny thing was that I was not tilting at all over this. The $1500 guaranteed was my 1st 6 handed tourney. That was different! We had one sitting out so it was really only playing 5 handed and we started with double stacks and had 15 minute blinds so it gives you a ton of room to work. I slowly chipped up to over 5,000 chips with just small pots and then lost it all in one hand. I raised pre-flop w/ A-9 and had 1 caller. Flop was A-9-3 W/ 2 hearts and I don’t have any hearts. The other guy raises a decent amount and I pushed all–in with my 2 pair hoping he had a crappy Ace. Well he had a crappy A-6, but it was suited hearts and he got his heart on the river. He had me out chipped so I was out. Sheesh…0 for 4 tonight!!! But I still wasn’t tilting for some reason..not sure why. By this time my two DON’s were winding down. I had a decent stack in one and wasn’t worried about that one, but I was one of the short stacks in the other with 7 left with 900 chips. Blinds were up to 125-250 and both of the other small stacks pushed and the big stack called and took them both out. Just after that the other table finishes so at least I have a few positive results for the evening. I signed up for two more $5.20 DON’s right away. I doubled up in one of them pretty quick and was on easy street the rest of that one. The 2nd one I just stayed around 1,500 chips until we were down to 7. I doubled up then and was looking at another easy finish since we had 2 other stacks under 600 chips and the blinds were at 125-250. Then came a hand that pissed me off! I am in the big blind and pick up 6-6. Yahoo in early position calls and one of the small stacks pushes all in. I went ahead and called as did the Yahoo. Flop comes K-10-6 all spades so I get my set. I am hoping to check it down and hope the short stack doesn’t have spades. The dang Yahoo in early position raises 750! I’m like WTF you idiot!! I figured he had his flush so I go ahead and fold. He flips up K-Q with no spades!! And the short stack has A-Q with ace spades. The turn brings the 2-spades and the river is 10-hearts. I would have made a full house but instead the short stack gets his flush and triples up to almost 1,700 chips! Freaking donkeys!!! I know I am glad they are playing otherwise I wouldn’t be winning but dang they really piss you off sometimes. Well guess what??? The donkey didn’t cash because of his dumb play. About 3 hands later the other short stack pushes and he calls and the big stack puts him all in. The big stack had A-A and takes them both out. So after starting 0-4 in my other tables I end up going 4-0 in my DON’s. I actually finish up $2.00 for the night but had to sign off at that point.
C-ya at the tables
Dave

Starting BR: $240
Ending BR: $242

Short Night

Well I hope that after this weekend I will be able to put in my usual table time again. I have barely played any the past 2 weeks now. Last night was no different. I did one $5.20 DON and tanked out in 8th..was card dead the entire time and we still had 8 people at the 125-250 blind level! I was short stack at 900 chips and was dominated when I pushed in late position w/ A-9 and was called by big blind with A-J… no running him down today and I was ejected…I had only fired up one instead of my usual two and just wasn’t feeling it last night so I didn’t bother signing up for more. I figured if I wasn’t focused on them I would just kill some ROI% and end up pissed off. I went ahead and opened up two .25/.50 limit Badugi tables though. This game is still really soft and as bad as I sure I am at it I always make some quick money here. I don’t have a problem saying it… I suck at poker! I don’t know all the right +EV moves to make. I make some bad folds and some worse calls sometimes when I play poker. You know what though?? I am still better than the majority of the players I sit down with so I still make money!! That’s the great thing about poker. You don’t have to be the greatest or even that good.. you just have to be better than most of the people at your table to crush a game. So back to my Badugi sessions. I only played about 30 minutes and finished up over $15.00. It just amazes me at how bad some players are at this game. I see 2 raises pre-draw and then someone will call the raises and then draw 3!!! I’m like WTF!! It’s hilarious to watch and only takes about one orbit to find the 4 or 5 that are totally clueless. At one table I had a gold-star sit down to my right with a $100.00. Not sure if he was just trying to show off to us lowly bronze stars or if he was just trying to learn the game since most just buy-in with $10.00. He didn’t stay long and I never managed to get into a pot with him, but he was very aggressive and ended up about $7.00 ahead without ever showing a hand down. Either he ran REALLY good or he just bluffed everyone out. He would always come in for a raise and stand pat each draw and just keep raising. By the final draw everyone would just fold to him. I did make one bonehead play (from what I have read about Badugi strategy) that ended up working out and winning me a nice $5.00 pot. I was dealt a King High Badugi and raised. I had a few callers and stood pat and they all drew cards. I raised again and only had 2 callers and stood pat and they both drew cards. I raised again and this time I was re-raised by just one guy. I called and he stood pat. I knew he ran me down and since I had the worse Badugi possible I could only win if I improved. I went ahead and tossed my King and drew one and drew a 5 giving me a 7 high Badugi now! He led out with a raise and I re-raised him and took it down. I know drawing a card when you already have a made Badugi is supposed to be a cardinal sin but is it really if you know you are beat if you don’t draw? I figured I had nothing to lose in this particular spot. I also checked out a $10/$20 Badugi table to see how it played. They play just as bad as the .25/.50 tables do. They just have more money! LOL.
C-ya at the tables
Dave
Starting BR: $230
Ending BR: $240

How am I running?

Last night I took a few minutes to run a few of my numbers to see how I have been running in my $5.20 DON’s now that I have a few more under my belt. Since I started playing $5.20 DON’s I have run 46 out of 75 total for a 18% ROI overall. This past week I ran 15 out of 25 for a 16.7% ROI. Since I still don’t have very many logged that Monkey Tilt session I had really hurt me when I ran 0 for 5. If I would have logged off when I knew I was tilting before I did those 5 DON’s my overall ROI would have been 24.5% and for the past week it would have been 42%!!! Three things just screamed at me when I saw this! 1st: It’s very easy to see why you need a very large sample to gauge your ROI accurately. The 5 tourneys I blew when I was tilting lowered my overall ROI by 6.5%!! 2nd: DO NOT PLAY WHEN TILTING!!!! It will devastate your ROI and your bankroll. 3rd: Every single time you sit down it’s extremely important to focus and play the best you can. Never give up in a tourney just because you are almost out of chips. Out of 100 tourneys if you run at 25% ROI and you give up or lose just 1 tourney that you could have won if you stayed focused your ROI will drop 2%! EVERY single tourney is important! I see it so often when someone loses most of their stack on a hand and then move all in on the next hand because they have given up. If you want to be a winning player you can never give up! Just seeing these numbers short term is going to help me stay focused on the long term. Right now I am all about the short term since that’s all I have being a newbie. I am however thinking about the future and where I want to be in 3 months, 6 months and a year from now. I am also thinking about how I am going to get there and what ROI% I would need to get there given the amount of time I play. I have tweaked my bankroll requirements for moving up to the next levels some now. I knew the $10.40 level would play harder, but I didn’t like the feeling I had when I played those two tourneys last week. I am pretty sure I was playing scared since I was playing at a level I never had played at before. I’d rather 2-table $5.20’s that I am comfortable at instead of playing 1 $10.40 for now. I think I am going to hold off taking shots at the $10.40’s until I am at a $300 bankroll. At that time I think I will start 2-tabling a $10.40 along with a $5.20 to get my feet wet slowly at the $10.40 level. Once I have at least 15-20 of the $10.40’s under my belt I will review then to see if I can start playing them exclusively. I set a goal to reach by summer last month, but to come up with the goal I layed out some figures based on different ROI% at different levels. I did this back when I only had a $50 bankroll and so far I have to say I am pretty close to on track with each step I layed out. Of course each step becomes more important if I want to reach my goal. I also think each step will be harder and hopefully I will continue to grow in my abilities or I won’t reach it. I wasn’t going to put too many details on my blog about my plans or how I would reach them but what the heck it’s pretty basic anyway. I started in November with $25 initial bankroll.
My initial Goals were:
11/1/2008 : BR $25 play $1.10 DON’s @ 30% ROI
11/15/2008: BR$90 play $5.20 DON’s @ 25% ROI
12/15/2008: BR $300 play $10.40 DON’s @ 20% ROI
01/15/2009: BR $600 play $20.40 DON’s @ 15% ROI
02/15/2009: BR $1000 2-table $20.40 DON’s @ 15%ROI
03/15/2009: BR $1700 3-table $20.40 DON’s @ 15% ROI
04/15/2009: BR $2600 4-table $20.40 DON’s @ 15% ROI
05/15/2009: BR $4000 make 1st withdrawal $1,000
Now I layed this out based on some hopefully realistic attainable ROI% that I have pulled out of the forum’s. First off I have no idea if I can reach these ROI% to begin with, but if I want to reach my goal based on the hours I play then that’s what it will take. Second I am almost positive that this is going to change now. I am already seeing that I am going to blend two levels instead of just jumping up to the next one cleanly. Third I am pretty sure I won’t end up 4-tabling the $20.80’s. I think IF…IF… I ever get to that point that I will move up another level instead of 4-tabling. I just prefer to focus on fewer tables..my personal preference. I would prefer to 2-table the $52.00 DON’s @ 10% instead of trying to 4-table the $20.80’s @ 15% ROI. But that decision is months away AT BEST and I will cross that bridge if I ever happen to see it. Wouldn’t it be nice if I saw that bridge though!! LOL Back to the present.. Since I was up until 3:30 the previous night I just ran a few DON’s last night. I went 2 out of 3 and my loss came w/ K-K vs A-A at the 50-100 blind level. 8 remaining and I had 1,600 chips. I raised to 400 early position and was called by guy in middle. Flop came Jack high rainbow and I pushed and he called of course with his aces. Oh well..nothing you can do about that. The ONLY thing that would have saved my stack is an ace on the flop. At that stage of the tourney I would have folded my kings with an ace on the flop.
C-ya at the tables
Dave
Starting BR: $225
Ending BR: $230

Long Weekend

Well this weekend sucked about as bad as I thought it would. The company I work for does their annual physical inventory at all the stores on the first two weekends in December each year. I work at the regional office and have to oversee several stores to make sure they are on track and don’t do any funny stuff. I had to work some Friday night and then from 8am to 10:30pm on Saturday. I was supposed to have Sunday off but I ended up having to do some more work yesterday. That bites and I am going to have to do it all over again this coming weekend too. Understandably I got almost zero table time in this past weekend. I couldn’t swallow taking the whole weekend off from playing so last night I signed on after the family went to bed to squeeze in a couple hours at least. I ended up playing over 5 hours and was up until 3:30!! Oops!! Oh well…I can always sleep when I am dead..I do this all the time anyway..LOL. I have started experimenting with 3-tabling my DON’s with not much success. I think my biggest problem is staggering them properly so I am not having to make several key decisions at the same time. I keep wanting to start them all at the same time and it’s causing me problems in the endgame. I am going to try it a few more times and stagger them about 10 minutes apart and see if that helps. I have no problem 2-tabling so I think that should solve my problem. I have no idea how some of these guys are 15-20 tabling SNG’s! I have come across 3 or 4 of them and they all seem to be running right around a 10% ROI on the $5.20 DON’s. Not a bad profit for dinky $5.20 SNG’s when you are running 3000 of them a month! Nope, not even going to attempt to go there.. I don’t see myself ever going past 4 tabling. Maybe I am just too old, but I like to get reads on the tables so I have a better idea in the endgame of how likely I will be getting called on my pushes. I also enjoy playing and multi-tabling that much would make it too much of a grind and no fun at all!
Well I ended up running 5 out of 7 on my DON’s last night..then I tossed in a Pot Limit Badugi Tourney while my final 2 DON’s were finishing. I wrapped it up by signing up for a Sunday 200K satellite. I had problems getting going on the Badugi and hovered around starting chip count for the 1st hour! I finally got some cards and got up to 10K in chips which was 3rd at the time. Then I lost ½ of them on one hand when my 9 high starting Badugi hand was called all the way to the final draw when I was Pot betting the pot each round. Idiot finally made his hand on the final draw and beat me with 7 high Badugi. Hello!! I guess he didn’t care that I was standing pat for each draw the whole time! LOL.. Then I lost most of my chips a few hands later when I got an 8 high starting Badugi and started Pot betting pre-draw. Guy made his Badugi after the 1st draw and raised me.. I just called him down and luckily he didn’t put me all in. He also had an 8 high Badugi but his kicker was better. I was down to 1,000 chips now with blinds at 250-500!! Luckily there are no antes in Badugi so you can just sit there and wait for a hand. Well I never managed to get much more than that and just squeezed into the money and went out in 13th out of 104 runners. The 200K satellite looked like a repeat of my Badugi tourney! There were 106 runners and 19 got tickets and 20th received $3.00. I was utterly card dead almost the entire tourney!! At the 1st break I was at 1,400 chips with 100-200 blinds and 25 antes!! LOL.. I just stayed tight as a snare drum and pushed a few times and my hands held up. Towards the end I checked my stats and I had only played 10% of my hands and most of those were in my big blind! 2 hours of play and I only played 11 hands and 7 were in the big blind! LOL… what a nit!! I am not usually that tight, but I wasn’t going to push with garbage. But I made it and got a ticket to the Sunday 200K. I was signed up for it for maybe 20 seconds before I unregistered and got my $11 bucks..LOL.. I play these things like a SNG except it has a flat 400%ROI payout. Well, that’s it for now…C-ya at the tables!
Dave
Starting BR: $200
Ending BR: $225

Full Blown Monkey Tilt!

Yep, that’s right it happened to me last night! Full blown monkey tilt!! The night started off o.k. for me though. I played 3 $5.20 DON’s and cashed all 3. Trying my new step method I moved up to a $10.40 DON and lost, but I was out in 6th. I was still feeling pretty good about it though so I did another $10.40 and cashed. I then jumped over to some heads-up SNG since I haven’t done very many lately. Lost the 1st one pretty quick. Seemed like everytime I made a pair he had same pair w/better kicker. The next one I ended up against a Russian. Guy kept jamming the pot on every hand and it was frustrating me. He was a -25%ROI loser though so I just had to be patient. I started folding preflop more and no bluffs at all. I finally got a hand and doubled up basically reversing our chips counts. About 2 hands later I finished him when I got another hand. He did get under my skin though and that was the beginning of my tilt. The next guy I am not sure what to call.. he was technically ahead overall, but looked like a loser to me. He had a huge $1000 cash in a MTT at the start of the year and then bled it all during the year in MTT & SNG. Then in October he had another $1000 cash in a MTT SNG and has been still bleeding it off quickly. So he’s ahead for the year, but not very much and if it hadn’t won those 2 tourney he would have lost well over $1,500 this year. Well this match took quite a while and we were still fairly close in chips when we hit the 25-50 blind level. I picked up A-Q in the BB and he raised so I pushed and he called w/ A-J. I am really happy until the Jack hits on the turn crippling me to 150 chips. I double up 3 times in a row to get close again and then we go back and forth until the blinds are at 50-100. Then I push with A-K and he calls with K-10 and gets his 10 for the win. Crapola and now I am pissed that he sucked out on me twice. The hell with heads-up…I want to go back to my DON’s. Unfortunately I should have just quit then and still been up for the night. I am 2 tabling and proceeded to go 0 for 5 in the $5.20 DON’s and with each loss my tilt grew. 1st tourney I ran my Q-Q into A-A, 2nd tourney made it to final 6 and never got a hand. I went out pushing garbage against garbage and his hit. 3rd tourney we are down to 7 and I have 1,300 chips. There are 2 short stacks well under 1,000. I get K-K and a short stack pushes, I push and then the guy behind me calls and has me covered. Shorty has A-Q and the guy behind me has 2-2!! I was feeling pretty good since even if shorty hits his ace my stack would stay about the same since I was well ahead of the guy behind me. Flop comes 4-5-6 and now I have a sick feeling..turn is a blank and the 3 hits on the river giving Mr 2-2 his straight. I am out in 6th! I am really burning now!! Well into tilt at this point and I can see the monkey around the corner. If…”IF” I was thinking clearly I would just have signed off then and called it a small loss…but nope…gotta push through this BS. I sign up for 2 more $5.20 DON’s. The first one is playing really tight and at the 25-50 level all 10 are still here and have between 1,200 & 1,900 chips. The second table is the opposite. Chips are flying everywhere and donks are galore here. The biggest one is on the heater of his life and can’t lose. He has personally taken out 3 people and has taken bites out of 2 more with the worst garbage I have seen in quite a while. We are down to 7 and blinds just went to 50-100. I have 1,600 chips and get As-10s under the gun and king donk is in the small blind. I would normally fold this in a heartbeat but in my tilting state I raise it to 300. All fold except king donk. Flop is Ks, Kd, Qs giving me both a gutshot straight and a royal flush draw. King Donk leads out with 400 chips and with all my outs I should have just pushed especially since I didn’t think he had anything. I only called though and the turn was a 2c. He raised enough to put me all in and I called thinking I was still probably still ahead anyway and if I wasn’t I had a ton of outs to get there. The cards were flipped over and I was really wrong..He was ahead and had quite the hand!! 4-2 offsuit is what he was holding..yep..4-2.. and he was leading with those 2’s. The river was a blank and I was out in 7th. I was stunned and at this point I moved over from tilt into the full blown monkey tilt. I was still in the other DON that was running tighter than a snare drum and all 10 were still there. Blinds were also at 50-100 and on my next hand I pushed w/ J-10 and was called by an equal stack with K-J and was out in 10th. To make things worse I had forgotten I had signed up earlier for a 200K satellite ($2.20) and a badugi tourney and the 200K window pops up and is starting.. I manage to unregister for the Badugi tourney, but it’s too late for the 200K satellite. Full Blown Monkey Tilt!!!! I am done..toast..if I don’t log off soon I am going to blow my whole roll!! 1st hand I get K-10 suited and push all in.. I get called by 8-3!!!! And he pairs his 3 to take me out. At this point I don’t care as I just want to log off which I do. Shoulda Coulda Woulda… I SHOULD have logged of when I was up $15 for the night but since I am not going to be able to play much the next 2 weekends I wanted to put in a longer session and I was running pretty good. I COULD have logged off when I was even for the night realizing I was tilting and I knew it! I WOULD have lost my whole bankroll if I stayed on any longer though!! LOL. Well I ended up losing 10% of my starting bankroll or 16% of my high point. Not a total disaster but I know better and should have stopped it much sooner. Time for a day or two off to cool down.

Dave

Starting BR: $205

Ending BR: $184





update today: I did some more DON's, heads-up & Limit Badugi and got my stack back to $200

New DON Strategy

I am going to try a step buy-in strategy for my DON’s and see how it works out after a week. I currently am playing the $5.20 DON’s and am getting close to wanting to move up to the $10.40 DON’s, but I only have 20 buy-ins for those. I am expecting them to be a little harder than the $5.20’s and have more variance so I was wanting to have more buy-ins for that level. I am going to try a “3 in a row” win streak to trigger my next jump in buy-in and see how that works out. A series of 3 wins in a row will give me a profit of $14.40 for the $5.20 DON’s. I can then buy into a $10.40 DON and if I lose I will still have made $4.00 profit and will drop back down to the $5.20 and try again. If I win the $10.40 I will keep buying in to try and get 3 in a row so I can take a pop at a $20.80 maybe. Hopefully doing this will take advantage of when I am running good and increase my profits. On a side note on the DON’s…I hope that these don’t go away. I have seen several posts on the forum’s where people hate these and think they are horrible for poker. Maybe they are bad for poker, but they sure have been good for my bankroll!! I do have to admit that a Double or Nothing tournament is probably the only time you can cash without ever getting a hand. I have had several when I was completely card dead and only managed a few steals when the blinds went up and managed to survive. Even a regular SNG you are going to have to catch some cards or you won’t cash. DON’s have vastly improved my MTT tourney end game also. I have seen those results in 2 final tables in MTT tournaments the past week. Final tables are something I just haven’t seen before in MTT. I have always been able to run deep and sometimes even had monster stacks but I always seemed to spew them towards the end and fall short of the final table where all the money is. DON’s have helped me become much more patient and wait for good hands or good spots to steal. I have also seen an improvement in my regular SNG’s too. I haven’t played very many, but my results have been much better in them too. I am not sure if I am going to have a chance to meet my BR goal this month. I do the majority of my table time on Friday-Sunday but I have to work the next two weekends at my job so that’s going to really limit my hours online. Kind of a bummer but oh well..this is just a hobby.

Milestone

Well I had an o.k. session tonight. I started off with a pot limit Badugi, 60FPP step satellite and a Sunday 200K satellite first. The Badugi tournament didn't go as well as my last one. I doubled up once and won a few other small pots but never made it above 4K in chips. I ended up going out in 40th out of 104 with top 16 getting paid. The step satellite didn't go so well either. I was card dead the entire tourney and when I finally pushed (with a stack of 950) w/A-K I got called by big stack w/2-4 and he paired up. I went out in 36th with top 10 getting tickets. The Sunday 200K satellite went a lot better. I didn't get any cards for quite a while and just stayed out of the way and preserved my chips. I finally got a good run of cards almost an hour into it and doubled up and then tripled up when my A-A ran against K-K & Q-Q. That put me as chip leader with around 60 people left and 27 getting tickets to the 200K. At that point I was content to preserve my stack and stay out of the way of other aggressive medium stacks that could hurt me some. I had one nut on my right that had a nice medium stack and was really aggressive!! She ended up with a stack bigger than mine but wouldn't back off..she ended up busting out in around 25th!! Unreal…some people don't understand satellites.. I ended up with a ticket but I had no intention of playing in the 200K..that tourney lasts like 12 hours if you run deep. So I unregistered and got my $11 tourney dollars which is why I did it to begin with. I tried another 200K satellite while that one was winding down, but I got burned pretty early when my A-K was run down by A-4 when he made 2 pair. I then switched over to my $5.20 DON's and ran 4 for 5. I was especially proud of my final DON that I was in. Runners were especially bad tonight with only 1 or 2 other positive ROI at each table. To my left was a -25% roi guy. We were at the 25-50 blind level and picked up A-Q in late position and I haven't played a pot yet! There was one limper in front and I raised it to 200 and the Cowboy (it was in his name) thought a few seconds and pushed all in. For some reason I got a fast read on this guy and knew he was weak. As bad as he was I knew if he had a decent pair he would have just called and if he had a top pair he would have min raised me and not push all in and maybe chase me away. Even though at this point in the tourney I was screaming FOLD I went ahead and called. He had J-10 and then flopped the nut straight. I knew better even if I knew I was ahead it wasn't by that much since both his cards were alive. Well that left me with 240 chips and still 8 people in the tourney. Luckily 3 others were around 1,000 chips and the blinds were about to go up to 50-100. I wasn't giving up yet!! I folded the next few hands and then in the big blind I pushed all-in and of course was called since it was only double the blind. My hand was ahead and held up. Then a medium stack got frisky and fell in love with a hand and was busted by the Cowboy again (he was running very lucky!). Now I had 700 chips and the other 2 small stacks had around 800-900 each.. I still had a chance… then in early position I pick up A-9 which I normally auto fold, but with my chip count and the big blind of 150 coming to me next I pushed. I was called by the big blind with A-4. I was very happy until the board paired twice and we tied with our Ace kickers. That sucked!!! Instead of doubling up to around 1900 I was still at 775 instead. I was o.k. though since 2 other stacks were at 500 & 700. I had to fold both blinds since other people shoved and I was down to 500 chips now and the blinds jumped to 150-250. My lucky donkey Cowboy that put me in this position to begin with saved me. Both short stacks pushed all in and Cowboy called. Of course he had the worse hand of the three but in his usual fashion he ran them both down and both were busted. Whew…another win..but it was close. That win did push me past a milestone (maybe only temporarily!! LOL) $200 BANKROLL!!!
Dave

Starting BR: $187
Ending BR: $205

how do you know?

Things are going alright in my poker world. It looks like I am still on track with my goals so far. I do realize that I have a LONG way to go and have to take what is given to me and not force anything trying to reach a goal. I am still doing the $5.20 DON’s mostly and mixing in some heads-up and small buy-in MTT just to keep from getting burned out on the same format. I was thinking about accurate ROI% and I don’t think anyone but the high level players can ever really know what their true ROI% is. I have read that even a 1,000 game sample is too small of a sample to verify your ROI%. The problem is that most positive ROI% players will move up to the next level well before even reaching that amount. I ran a 35% ROI on the $1.20 DON’s but I only did 90 of them before moving up to the $5.20 DON’s! Did I run lucky or not?? We will hopefully never know because I sure hope never to be at that level again. Now I am doing $5.20 DON’s, but I only need another $15-20 profit before I begin to take shots at $10.40 DON’s. Only problem is that I have only ran around 40 of them and I have run at 20% ROI. The first 9 I went 9-0 and 92% ROI. The next 11 I went 3-8 and -47% ROI. The next 20 I have gone 13-7 and 25% ROI. So I have a slight dilemma… Since my sample is so small do I stay at this level longer until I have at least a 100 game sample or move up again? If I want to reach my goals I have to move up when my bankroll supports it so I think I am still going to move up. Of course if I lose the first couple of $10.40 DON’s I will drop right back down to the $5.20 level. The good thing about my long term goal is that I never plan on going above the $20.80 DON level to achieve it. Once my bankroll is large enough to play the $20.80 DON I am planning on staying there and just adding more tables until I am 4 tabling. If I reach that point then I achieved my long term goal and will set new ones then. Until then…back to the grind.
C-ya at the tables
Dave

Starting BR: $173
Ending BR: $187

Badugi anyone?

Hello again... I have been still running my $5.20 DON's the past few days and mixing in some heads-up to go with it. Not running near as high of a ROI% as I was, but it's still double digits. I tried a Badugi tournament last night. Pretty fun game..and it didn't hurt that I came in 3rd out of 98 runners for $24.00 on a $2.20 buy-in. Thats's it for now. C-ya at the tables

Dave

starting BR: $132
ending BR: $173

Deep MTT run

When I first started playing poker all I did was play the big MTT freerolls. Once I finally deposited and started playing for real I quit the MTT’s. They take up an awful long time and usually your payout is not worth the time invested. About the only MTT’s I have played lately are a few FPP buy-in’s. Well last night I had ANOTHER bad run with the $5.20 DON’s and was down $20.00. I got some back playing HU SNG but wasn’t in the right frame of mind to focus for heads-up play. I went ahead and signed up for the little dinky $.25 buy-in MTT that was about to start instead. I figured I would get an hour or so of play for $.25 and just have some fun and then call it a losing night. There ended up being over 3,600 people registered when it began and it was paying 702 places. I think you could just sit out and make the payouts in this tournament if you wanted to! People go out faster than a freeroll! I know it’s only $.25 but come on…the first 20 minutes and a 1,000 are already gone! My strategy for these low buy-in MTT’s has been to limp in late position with suited connectors or hands like KJ or KQ and hope for a very nice flop…or if I have a pair to push it pretty hard. The higher the pair the harder I push.. In these things if I have 10-10 or better I am really jamming the pot preflop..400-500 in the early rounds.. I am going to be moving all in after the flop with these hands anyway since at these buy-ins idiots will call with almost anything so I give them no credit early on. If I am beat by a monster oh well. I definitely small ball it until I have a really nice hand. I don’t get to pushy with top pair early on. I don’t get too concerned with building a stack in these until we are in the money. If I can maintain around 2000-3000 chips the first hour then I am happy. After the first break is usually about the time you hit the money.. it’s also about the time I go into push or fold strategy. Now the blinds are big enough that they can really increase your stack even in noone calls you. I just wait for a nice starting hand and push. I will normally get called by a big stack that has been playing almost every pot the whole tourney and just got lucky a few times. Bam..double up number one…in one hand I am above average chip stack again. The weak players that like to limp every hand or raise with garbage just don’t know when to back off and they lose their stacks pretty quickly. So back to last night…….. 1st hour..about average stack and only played 3 or 4 pots…hit the money just after 1st break..Yay.. I’m rich..LOL… 2nd hour… still about average stack but I upped the number of pots played to 10 and we are down to 400 left. 3rd hour I get some nice hands and double up a few times and then I can finally start to steal some pots. I made it all the way to 2nd chip spot for a few minutes and we are down to 150 left. 4th hour (yes these things are long!) I go card dead (and I mean dead!!!) I probably only played 5 or 6 pots that hour and watched my stack slowly dwindle from top 10 stack down to just average and we are down to around 25 left. 5th hour I figured we would burn through to the final table pretty quickly…nope!! It took the whole hour to get down to the final table. I got one double up to get my stack back up and then picked my spots to steal. 6th hour I went into final table 6th in chips out of the 9. Now the payouts really jumped and the people started dropping like flies. After 6 hours of play and now they choose to play like donkeys when the $141.00 is in reach?? I don’t understand it. One guy raised preflop and was called. He pushed all in after the flop with K-2 when he had bottom pair and two other face cards were on the board? Well in 30 minutes we were down to just 3.. and we were all about even stacks. With the big payout in reach it was my turn to make the donk move!!! I push all-in w/ A-9 and the small blind snap calls with A-K and I am done… Sheesh what an idiot I am.. well the $48.00 helped ease the pain of being an idiot, but it still sucks going that far and messing up. Still all-in-all a good run for me.

C-ya at the tables
Dave

Starting BR $100
Ending BR $132

so so weekend

Well I guess my good run is over. The past 3 days have really been a struggle. Variance has been biting me in the ass a lot lately. I thought I had one bad beat, but once I reviewed the hand I realized it wasn’t. 7 people left in a $5.20 DON and 3 short stacks (I have 1000 in BB, early pos has 600 and mid pos has 900 and blinds are at 200-400!) early pushes and mid pos calls and I choose to go all-in instead of calling with A-K. The early position had garbage and middle position had 3-3. A-K-5 comes the flop and I am thinking I am now good with my top 2 pair, but of course the 3 comes on the river. I was left with 100 chips and was all in next hand in small blind and was out in 6th! I was steamed since he hit a 2 outer on the river, but then I realized he was favorite pre-flop anyway!! That calmed me down some..but it did still suck..LOL.. Then it made me wonder if I only called pre-flop if he would have folded his 3’s and saved his last couple hundred???? The rest of my losses have been in coin flips or the occasional high pair vs higher pair. I have been playing pretty well and have run deep in most of my SNG’s. I am still bouncing back and forth between $5.20 DONs and multi-table $1.10 DONs while mixing in a few multi-table SNG’s and some heads-up SNG’s. I don’t like playing the same type of tourney over and over again since it gets stale and I think it hurts my play overall since each kind has a different strategy and plays different. The good news is the bankroll is still climbing..just very little the past few days. I played quite a few hours the past 3 days and only saw a minimal increase in my bankroll. Considering I don’t think I was running very well during that span I do think it’s great that it still went up though. One other thing is that I totaled up all my buy-ins on MTT & SNG and in the past couple months I have bought into almost $800 worth of tourneys. Wow..not a bad bang for your buck for some fun entertainment. Beats spending $20 to see a 2 hour movie! At a 10% ROI if I want to get to a $1000 BR I would have to buy into $10,000 worth of tourneys! Wow.. that’s sick..LOL.
Dave

Starting BR $93.00
Ending BR $100.00

I am a donkey!

I meant to put this in the last post as it happened last night at one of the $1.10 DON turbos. Apparently I am a donkey! It was about the 3rd hand and I picked up K-K in middle position. 1st guy limps, 3rd guy limps, pot is $70 and this early in the tourney I don’t want to get cute. I raise to $200 because it just drives me crazy how many people will call with crappy A-x if you only raise it to $120 this early in these DON’s. Everyone folds as expected except guy in seat 3 calls. I think he has a crappy A-x or 2 face cards since he didn’t raise seat 1 earlier (probably sooted! LOL). The flop comes 2-5-8 rainbow and he puts in a whopping $60 raise into a $450 pot. I give him a “small” re-raise back to $500 and he promptly folds. I am content to end it right there and be happy with my 310 added chips and increase my stack 20%. What comes next kind of surprised me…in the chatbox..”DONKEY” from the guy in seat 3.. ??? WTF? Where in the world did that come from? I rarely ever type anything into the chatbox and normally mind my own business, but this irritated me for some reason (it was getting late and I was about done for the night so maybe I was just tired). I typed back “you’re an idiot for calling a big raise out of position with a crappy Ace”. I looked him up on top shark and his SNG stats were 45 games, -$8.00 profit for a whopping -16% ROI.. So I could see that he sucked and that he hadn’t played very long at Pokerstars at least. He comes back with an awesome response “you’re a donkey”..LOL… he’s so creative. I guess he was just trying to get under my skin and actually it worked because he did take my focus off the games some. I figured this was just going to go around and around, but I wanted to get my $.02 in so could get back to focusing on the games themselves. I typed his stats into the chatbox and said that he sucked but I hoped he kept signing up and that all the positive ROI players would be happy when he was around. Well that kind of shut him up..all he came back with was “we’ll see who’s here at the end of this table”. Oh brother like placing in one table makes a difference. I didn’t bother responding, but in the end he did make it there..I guess he got lucky..LOL.. one final note….I am a donkey!

Dave

my 1st tilt test!

Well I had my first tilt/bankroll test last night since I re-deposited. For DON’s I used a 15-20 buy-in BR requirement to move from the $1.10 turbos to the $5.20 turbos and I am at $90 so last night I planned on playing the $5.20’s only. I know all the forums’s and books say 30-50 buy-ins for proper bankroll management but they are wrong..LOL At this level you are playing against weak opponents and there is a huge gap between the $1.10 and $5.20 if you look at 30-50 buy-ins. My theory is if you start taking shots at the $5.20 at around 15-20 buy-ins and lose it is very easy to drop back to $1.10 and still have the 30-50 buy-ins for the $1.10’s. As I move up in levels though I do plan on increasing my buy-in requirements along the established amounts. At the $10 and up the opposition will be better and the variance greater so I do plan on having at least 30 buy-ins before taking that leap. Well my previous good run in the $5.20’s ended last night. I ended up playing 5 and lost 3. I played well, but just was a tad unlucky with my timing of pushes. I went out in the 1st one in 6th.. I was getting pretty short and my A-Q all in ran into A-K.. no problem. I won my next two and thought I was back on track. Then my all-in K-K runs into A-Q when a Ace hits on the turn (preflop all-in) and I was out in 7th. In my final $5.20 I never got a hand and slowly dwindled. I made some shoves as the blinds increased and luckily picked up the blinds to stays alive. I am unsure what I did next was bad or not. 7 people are left and blinds are at 150-300 plus the ante. I am small blind and have 1000 chips and I am short stack at table. Big blind has 1,100 chips and is 2nd shortest stack. Rest of table is around 2,000 or higher. I get A-A and it’s folded around to me (crapola.no action!). I was pretty sure if I shoved or even min raised the BB was folding and I would only pick-up the blinds and antes. That would have given me a stack of 1,475 and I would have still been 2nd shortest stack by quite a bit. I thought if I slowplayed I might double up to 2175 chips so I just completed the blind hoping he would re-raise me thinking I was weak. He just checked and we get a 2-4-6 rainbow flop. I min raise 300 and he goes all-in and I insta-call. He has 5-6 for a pair and straight draw. A 6 on the river puts me out in 7th. LOL..well that’s what I get for being cute with my hand.. I need to post this on 2+2 and see if I really was an idiot or not for slow playing it in that position. Here is where I faced my test. I was pissed that I was outdrawn in both tourney losses in a row (not bad beat, but I was slightly favored in both) and was ready to GET MY MONEY BACK…LOL.. I could sign up for another $5.20 and if I won I would be back to almost even but if I lost I would be almost down to my minimum buy-in for $5.20’s. OR I could sign up for a $10.40 and if I won I would be ahead… hmm… what to do… Well I signed up for 4 $1.10’s instead! I thought this would give me a chance to chill a bit and have enough tables working to keep my mind occupied in the present and forget about the previous 2 tourneys. Well I placed in all 4 and then signed up for 4 more and placed in all of those too. I ended slightly up for the night and I was proud of myself for moving down when I was steaming a little instead of staying at the $5.20 level or worse moving up! It’s something I need to remember the next time I start to steam a little.

See ya at the tables Dave

my poker goals

o.k. now that we are in the present..what about the future.. gotta have some goals right?? Well of course I do..I want to win enough money in the next 2 years that I can retire!! LOL... o.k. back to reality.. Here is what I would like to accomplish shortterm :
1) have fun!!
2) keep a positive ROI% ( I have thought "IF" I removed my tilt explosions that I ran a positive ROI%)
3) playing 15-20 hours/week to get my BR up to $250-300 by end of year

now my long term goals:
1) have fun!
2) have my BR around $4,000 by this summer (approx 6 months)
3) do my 1st cash out ($1,000) by this summer.

See ya at the tables...Dave

Round #2 a new beginning

O.k.. I was ready for try again. This was about 2 weeks ago. Same plan as before.. Micro SNG's and Heads-up SNG. I planned on staying away from ring games. It seemed I would always get ahead quite a bit and end up losing it to a bad beat later in the session. I prefer the SNG as I know what my loss/profit will be for each one. While I took my month off Pokerstars came out with their Double or Nothing SNG's (DON'S from now on). I read a few articles on these and watch a couple and they looked pretty easy so that's where I began. TAG TAG TAG.. if you are going to play these you better have a set of balls on you.. Shove fests late in the game and aggression wins. Well I love these things. I have seen all kinds of posts of how boring they are and low ROI%, but I disagree.. I multitable 4 of the $1.10 turbos and that keeps you plenty busy. for the 1st week I ran 36% ROI and then I started mixing in a $5.20 turbos every now and then the 2nd week. It didn't hurt that I ran 9/9 on the $5.20 during the 2nd week while I kept up the $1.10's. The great thing about these (at least for me) is that I don't tilt when I lose a few. So now we are to the present day.

Starting BR $25
Current BR $90

Post #2 continuation of Post #1

Well finally my double up attempt didn't work and I tilted my BR down to $8.00. At that point instead of taking a break and trying Micro's again I decided I had nothing to lose. I started playing Heads-Up SNG's. First a $5.. I won..then a $10..I won...then a $20..I won.. WEEEEEE.. In about 45 minutes I was right back up to almost $50 again. Hmmmm.. Let's try this .50/1.00 NL ring table.. buy in for full roll and managed to play about 10 hands when I lost KK vs. A-J when the ace fell on the turn... Poof!! I'm a tilting donk idiot.. LOL... Well that summed up my first real money play.. I ended up with almost 200 FPP points so I did get a lot of play for my $25, but wow...I had some severe problems with tilt and impatience.

So I took a month off...not even a freeroll...
Then deposited another $25 and said "let's see if I can do this right this time"

Dave

my 1st blog... wow... earth shattering

Hello there!! This is my 1st attempt at doing a blog. Most of my entries will be about poker since that is what I love doing for a hobby. A little background on my extensive poker career: been horsing around for a few years now. I started playing play chips and freerolls to learn the game some. On occasion I would place in a freeroll and then promply lose the small amount of money I had. Finally about 6 months ago I deposited a whopping $25 on Pokerstars and started trying to build a bankroll. I doubled it up in about 2 weeks playing micro SNG's and NL ring games. I thought I was on the way to a million... THIS IS EASY! LOL... then Mr. Tilt had to show his ugly face.. one or 2 bad beats and I was steaming!!! "These damn donkeys don't know how to play!" I thought...well I will just move up to a higher buy-in and win it all back in 1 shot... LOL... yep...awesome bankroll management and doing it while on tilt at that!! Well luckily it worked out for me usually but I remained stuck at the $50 BR level for another 2 weeks ( with huge downswigns followed by faster upswings). Well that's all for this post. I will do another to keep them from being too long.
Dave